Top 3 California superintendents

Poway Unified Superintendent John Collins is not only the highest paid superintendent in San Diego County — his compensation package is third highest among California’s 25 largest school systems.

At $386,000, Collins makes $9,000 less than Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy, who oversees a district with 19 times more students and a budget 23 times the size of Poway’s.

Collins, a longtime Poway administrator and teacher who replaced former superintendent Don Phillips in 2010, is head of one of the top academic school districts in the state.

The district’s Academic Performance Index score of 892 is tops among K-12 school districts in San Diego County, and the district often is mentioned in trade publications among the best school districts in the nation. The API score has improved 10 points during his tenure.

A big contributor to Collins’ place on the compensation chart is a $67,000 payment that he’s entitled to receive under his contract as cash or as a payment to purchase retirement service credits. He chose the cash. Education experts said the payment is a unique fringe benefit.

Collins said the perk was a carry-over from his predecessor’s benefits package, which the school board mirrored when hiring him in an effort to keep compensation costs from growing. Collins noted that his package does not include several perks that Phillips enjoyed, such as an auto allowance, $10,000 in deferred compensation and an annual cost-of-living escalator.

Still, the Poway pay is high in relation to the district’s enrollment and budget, compared to other large districts.

Collins is paid $11.02 per student, the most among any of the top 25 districts. The average among the superintendents is $4.10 per student.

His compensation comes out to $1 for every $695 of school funds that he manages, also the most of any of the top 25. The average among the top districts is $1 of compensation for every $2,321 of funds managed.

San Diego Unified Superintendent Bill Kowba, who earns just over $310,000 in salary and benefits, oversees $6,000 in budget for every dollar he earns. His pay package equals $2.36 per student.

The Watchdog surveyed the top 25 districts as a follow-up to an October survey of the San Diego County’s districts. Eleven of the 25 superintendents have compensation packages larger than $300,000. Other highlights:

• Deasy of Los Angeles earns the highest base salary on the list at $330,000. He also has a private driver and security, the lone school chief on the list who reported this benefit.

• Fresno Unified’s Superintendent Michael Hanson is eligible for an annual $30,000 bonus based on certain personal and districtwide benchmarks. He has declined the bonus the past four years amid a state schools funding crisis. If he had accepted it this year, he would have had the top compensation at just over $400,000.

• Two superintendents received money to pay for housing: San Francisco’s Richard Carranza and San Bernardino’s Dale Marsden. Marsden received a $20,000 lump sum payment to relocate to San Bernardino from Victorville and $14,000 in annual housing dollars. Carranza receives $20,000 in annual housing payments.

• Corona-Norco Unified Superintendent Michael Lin has the largest longevity bonus of any of the district heads, $28,000 a year on top of his base salary.

In Poway, a number of residents were critical of Collins’ compensation package after The Watchdog highlighted it in an story on Oct. 27.

“As class sizes continue to grow and class offerings are cut, it is the students who lose,” said Susan Hill, parent of two district graduates. “Clearly, the focus on providing high quality education, which was once the pride of Poway, has taken a back seat to excessive compensation packages.”

The district has been in the headlines this year because of the structure of a $105 million bond deal that will cost taxpayers 10 times that amount to pay back over 40 years. The capital-appreciation bond comes with no payments for 20 years followed by balloon payments in the out years.

Voters this month ousted longtime school board President Linda Vanderveen after a campaign that criticized the bond deal.

Pedro Garcia, a professor at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education, earlier said he wouldn’t be surprised if Collins’ compensation was among the highest, if not the highest, in the state. Garcia said this week that while legal, the compensation sets a bad precedent for Poway and beyond.

“It is legal but it erodes public trust,” Garcia said. “What is Poway going to do when he retires? Are they going to do the same for the next superintendent, because usually, a district pays the next superintendent about the same amount they were paying the previous one.”

Collins noted that he sacrificed pay along with other staff members during the recent financial crisis.

“When we have done salary rollbacks, I have taken the same percentage rollback,” he said.

When he was hired in 2010, Collins agreed to an immediate 4.3 percent cut to his base pay. That has since been restored.

The Watchdog attempted to contact Poway’s board members about Collins’ compensation. Longtime board member Andy Patapow declined to comment. Other board members, including Marc Davis who previously said that he believed Collins’ pay reflected the district’s success under his leadership, did not return calls for comment over a three-week period.

In San Bernardino, Marsden — who was hired this year from an elementary school district in Victorville — said San Bernardino was looking for a superintendent who would be a part of the community for a long time, and he was looking for financial security for his family.

“Given that superintendent posts are among the most tentative positions in the school system, the board felt it was in the best interest to provide a package that would provide my family security and stability, which would allow me to focus 100 percent of my energies on running the district,” he said.